Book Image

Mastering Active Directory

By : Dishan Francis
Book Image

Mastering Active Directory

By: Dishan Francis

Overview of this book

Active Directory is a centralized and standardized system that automates networked management of user data, security, and distributed resources and enables interoperation with other directories. If you are aware of Active Directory basics and want to gain expertise in it, this book is perfect for you. We will quickly go through the architecture and fundamentals of Active Directory and then dive deep into the core components, such as forests, domains, sites, trust relationships, OU, objects, attributes, DNS, and replication. We will then move on to AD schemas, global catalogs, LDAP, RODC, RMS, certificate authorities, group policies, and security best practices, which will help you gain a better understanding of objects and components and how they can be used effectively. We will also cover AD Domain Services and Federation Services for Windows Server 2016 and all their new features. Last but not least, you will learn how to manage your identity infrastructure for a hybrid-cloud setup. All this will help you design, plan, deploy, manage operations on, and troubleshoot your enterprise identity infrastructure in a secure, effective manner. Furthermore, I will guide you through automating administrative tasks using PowerShell cmdlets. Toward the end of the book, we will cover best practices and troubleshooting techniques that can be used to improve security and performance in an identity infrastructure.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)

The Active Directory replication

Healthy replication is the key to the healthy Active Directory environment. Active Directory uses multi-master database, so every domain controller in the environment should be aware of any changes made to any of the Active Directory databases. It is not only that, it should also know about changes in group policies, startup scripts, preferences settings, and so on, which will also be saved in the SYSVOL folders. When it comes to replication, it is not only the replication service responsible for it. There should be an uninterrupted communication between domain controllers. This communication media can be copper cables, fiber cables, or even via a Software Defined Network (SDN). In this section, we are going to look at how we can use the Active Directory integrated features to maintain a healthy replication.

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